Friday, 11 April 2014

Media Quotes of the Week: Maria Miller, gay kissing splash, Peaches Geldof and are the Guardian and national press now united?

The Daily Telegraph in a leader: "The irony that Mrs Miller is overseeing the efforts to make newspapers sign up to a state-sponsored regulatory system, while MPs seem to blithely ignore their own, has not gone unnoticed."

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian: "The nasty nexus of interests revealed in the Miller case shows why public opinion is right: neither MPs nor the press are fit to regulate themselves."

Raymond Snoddy ‏@RaymondSnoddy on Twitter:"So who thinks Maria Miller's Royal Charter on the press is such a good idea now? Can such politicians be trusted with press freedom?"

The Times [£] in a leader: "Relations with the media are already fraught because of Parliament’s insistence on trying to impose state intervention. A Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport need not agree with the media, but she should at least retain a minimal amount of trust. Sadly that trust has been broken. The only possible interpretation of the comments made by her special adviser at the outset of the expenses inquiry is that she was threatening newspapers, using her leverage as the Cabinet minister with the biggest say over the regulatory system."

Daily Mail in a leader: "Right up to the end, Maria Miller couldn’t bring herself to utter the word ‘sorry’. Indeed, she seemed unable to grasp that she had done anything seriously wrong. Instead, she sought to portray herself as victim of a media witch-hunt, mounted in vengeance for her role in implementing Leveson and legalising gay marriage. How childish – and how deeply offensive."Patrick Wintour in the Guardian: "In opposition, guided by Andy Coulson, the former News of the World executive, Cameron proved ruthless with his errant MPs. In government cocooned in Downing Street, bonded with colleagues by the pressure of office and distracted by issues of state, he totally misread the public mood. Right to the end he was prepared to defend her. It will make his skin that bit thicker, and relations with the media that much more wary, but above all remind him how far the political class have yet to travel to restore trust."

@gallaghereditor Greetings Tony and well done. This is a Twitter moment: a former editor led a campaign and succeeded AFTER leaving job

Roy Greenslade on the coverage of the death of Peaches Geldof on his MediaGuardian blog: "Inevitably, we are bound to ask why a 25-year-old woman should engender so much coverage. What is it about our 2014 news values that dictated such a response? Yes, celebrity, is at its heart. It is also the case that when people die young and unexpectedly the uniqueness of the event affects the coverage."

Bristol Post editor Mike Norton on his gay kiss front page, as quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “I’m a Bristolian, brought up in South Bristol. Real Bristol. One of the things I love about my home town is how characterful, tolerant and non-conformist its people are. So I thought Bristol was ready for that picture. But, boy, was I wrong. We lost thousands of sales of the paper. Which surprised me. Because, on the day, we received just nine phone calls of complaint."

Telegraph Media Group editor in chief Jason Seiken, on the future of journalism, as reported by Press Gazette: "A culture that is less top down and more about empowering journalists and holding them accountable. A culture where staff in their twenties and thirties rise more rapidly than ever because in areas such as social media they are the true digital natives."

The Grey Cardigan on TheSpinAlley on the departure of the editor of the Reading Chronicle following its football violence splash: "As far as I am concerned, this seems like a massively over-the-top, knee-jerk reaction to what was, after all, an innocent misjudgement made without malice. Maurice O’Brien is 64. This is a terrible way for his lengthy and distinguished career to end. Worse than that, it sets a very dangerous precedent for his successor. The Powers That Be, never slow to try to influence press coverage, now know that if they make enough fuss about a story that displeases them, then management in Reading is liable to cave in rather than support their editor. This will not have gone unnoticed and will almost certainly be exploited in future. A bad day all round.

Steve Hewlett in the Guardian: "Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is on the record as writing off the whole idea of underpinning press self-regulation with a royal charter as 'medieval' and profoundly undemocratic, describing it as a 'constitutional pantomime horse'. And of course the paper's experience when running the Snowden revelations of being attacked by politicians – some of whom went as far as calling for Rusbridger to be arrested – impacted on these broader arguments in two significant ways. First it might be seen as having strengthened arguments for keeping politicians away from press regulation altogether (the current Royal Charter can be changed with two thirds majorities in both houses of Parliament), and secondly it brought other newspapers and the Guardian closer together than they have been in a long time."Alan Rusbridger on Twitter: Not being paranoid, but new houseboat has moored itself under my office window for the past 24 hours pic.twitter.com/nmuIQKsOxe

About Me

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK and was deputy editor of Press Gazette, the journalists' magazine, from 1993 until 2006. I want to give an independent view on media matters.
You can contact me with stories, ideas and comments by email at jon.slattery369@btinternet.com You can also follow me on Twitter @jonslattery